Aftereffects
by ncfan
Summary: Sometimes the illusion isn't worth the cost paid later. /She is alone again./


If you want to see me write about a certain character or character combination, tune in to my poll.

Just a nice little disturbing, psychological piece for your enjoyment.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

* * *

Genjutsu is a ninja art usually left alone. It requires great intelligence, high levels of fine chakra control and large reserves of chakra.

But there are other reasons as well. Reasons few know or remember, or _care_ to remember as a matter of fact.

After long missions, Kurenai always locks herself in her house, and it is days before she returns from it. Only another genjutsu user would know why…

* * *

The walls shift and move, liquid and frothy. The smooth wood floors become the tossing surface of a salt ocean, dark and sucking. These waters drag Kurenai down, down…

She is tossing and turning under the surface of the water, but when she opens her mouth accidentally, no salty water fills her mouth and lungs. She is being jostled back and forth, but she isn't wet. However, she isn't safe because in place of water there is a void that makes her lungs contract unbearably when she tries to take a breath. Pushing against intangible water, Kurenai starts to swim back towards the surface.

As Kurenai swims, the violent rip tide pulls against her, leaving bloody gouges in her pale skin, going bruise blue where the intangible salt water touches it. Though her lungs aren't filling with water, she feels as though she is drowning. The surface grows further and further away, and no matter how she swims she can't seem to reach it.

Just as all the strength begins to fail her sore and beleaguered limbs, Kurenai reaches the surface. But instead of feeling air crash into her lungs, Kurenai receives the shock of her life.

When she presses above the surface, instead of meeting air, salt water soaks her dark hair. Kurenai has swum through a void only to find the actual ocean at the surface. She has opened her mouth without realizing what was awaiting her, and Kurenai gags on the salt water that dries out her mouth and floods her throat.

Suddenly, Kurenai is aware that the ocean isn't the surface anymore, and that there is another surface, one of air, waiting for her above, if she can find the determination to reach it.

Ignoring the screaming pain in her muscles, Kurenai again begins to swim. Having been raised in the desert, she's a weak swimmer, and even if she was at full capacity this wouldn't be easy for her, and as she is, the water pulls on her like a thousand slimy arms.

This groping feeling on her arms and legs is dragging her down, but Kurenai knows that she has to get to the surface, because the air possessed inside of her body will only last so long, and when it's gone, the inky abyss below her will swallow her whole.

She swims for the surface, her long hands stretching, the blood oozing from her wound making her dizzy and lightheaded, the lack of air doing the same. Kurenai sees the surface, sweet, fresh air, just within reach, and her hands stretch greedily overhead.

And they hit a barrier.

Kurenai has reached the roof of the water, but she can not break the surface of the water. There is a clear, glass barrier, robbing her of her freedom.

Kurenai struggles and presses her weight against the glass, fighting and writhing. She opens her mouth in a soundless scream of frustration, and before she can prevent it, her lungs fill with water.

The world begins to grow dark. Kurenai feels her limbs go flaccid, feels her eyes grow unbearably heavy and her heart begin to slow down.

She ceases to fight. She sinks down into the abyss, and everything goes black…

"Kurenai?" Someone is shaking her shoulder. Kurenai twists and turns, and realizes that she is twisting in sheets, and that she is on a bed. She is relieved, yet she doesn't open her eyes. For some reason, she wants to sleep a little longer.

"Kurenai? Wake up, darling." Kurenai's eyes fly open. That voice…

"Kurenai? It's time for breakfast." Her mother is smiling down at her, her curly black hair falling in front of her face. But that can't be right.

That can't be right, because Yuuhi Tokemi has been dead for twenty-one years.

Kurenai gapes. Because it is her mother. Her flesh-and-blood mother, back from the grave. Kurenai wants to jump and hug her, to sob and wail because it's the first time she's seen her mother in over twenty years. But she can't. She's frozen, stiff and solid.

The room she's in. It's perfectly identical to the room she had in the large house she, her parents and her sister shared as a child, down to the vanity and the carved painted music box.

"Mother…" Kurenai whispers hoarsely.

The older woman smiles. "Your sister and I will be waiting for you in the kitchen; your father was called away on a mission early in the morning." She leaves.

Kurenai jumps. The world starts moving again. "Mother!" She goes tearing out into the narrow hallway she knows will be there, and sees…

Nothing.

She can hear footsteps within inches of her, but she sees nothing. And when Kurenai passes the mirror hanging on the wall of the sunlit hall, there is no reflection.

She tears through the house. "Mother?" She goes to the kitchen. "Akemi?" Her next stop is the master bedroom. Her parents' large tatami mat is neat and clean, the plain white sheets smell of cinnamon and sand as they always do, but they are unmarked.

Kurenai runs through the house again and again, hot desert sunshine heating her clammy skin and sand getting in her hair and her clothes. "Mother?! Neesan?! Mother?! Neesan?!" Her voice grows higher and more agitated; the house begins to shake and spin.

_No, this can't be happening... Not now, not again... It can't, it can't...  
_

She is alone again. All alone…

It is tomorrow morning when Kurenai is found in her house, in her house, in a half-conscious, half-catatonic state. Asuma, Hinata, Kiba and Shino take her to the hospital, and she is immediately diagnosed with genjutsu backlash, the results of having used genjutsu too extensively on the last mission. She is put on anti-psychotics and medication meant to alleviate the hallucinations brought on by genjutsu.

Kurenai knows… Sometimes the illusion isn't worth the cost paid later.

* * *

Disturbing enough for you?


End file.
